Do you have...

[Charlie Bear (582)]

He always felt cold. No matter how many layers he put on, he just could not stave it off. He wrapped his arms around himself as he walked out the front doors of the building. Outside was much quieter, and he sat down on the step, breathing hot air into his hands. Without thinking about it, he grabbed behind his ear, but he found nothing back there. He then checked the other ear. Nothing again. He most have smoked his last cigarette. Charlie didn’t remember doing that, but he must have since he didn’t have it behind his ear. Could he have lost it? No, no. He wouldn’t have lost it. It was far too important to loose. Those cigarettes were his only link to anything before the oblivion.

Charlie rubbed his hands together, as he tried to dredge up the memories he saw when he smoked. The images tickled the back of his mind, and every time he tried to make it more concrete, they seemed to fade away. There were little girls; there were always little girls, but who were they? He never saw their faces, and if he did, he didn’t remember them afterwards. Those little girls always said something as well, but he couldn’t make out the words, and the words always sounded different to him. What were the words?

The memory was starting to fade again like wisps of smoke. Charlie rubbed his forehead. He needed a cigarette. He needed to feel the tingle on his lips, and the synapses firing in his head. Charlie wanted to remember, and once again his hand came to his ear.

Empty.

Oh yes, he’d forgotten for a moment. He brushed the curls off his forehead. As he turned his head, he saw someone out of the corner of his eye, and he jumped. He hadn’t heard them coming at all! He hated when people crept up on his bad side. He never saw them coming -- or heard them coming.

The person sat down on the stairs too, opposite of him. Charlie turned all the way towards them.

“You,” his gaze flickered to the sky as he thought of his words, “you has…” he put his fingers up to his lips as if he was smoking, “you has with fire?” He watched them for a long moment. Charlie was sure there was something missing from what he said. It didn’t sound right; Charlie knew that much.

[Katya Dmytruk (11)]

Today was one of the worse for Kat. She awoke as most of the residents were already been filing out of the hall, and as she looked around, the cots surrounding hers were all empty. She felt more lost than ever, searching for that single face her mind's eye remembered, but he wasn't there. So, like the keystone of an arch, without that single familiarity, the few memories she had couldn't support themselves anymore, and tumbled to the ground. Today, her name was Kat, and only Kat. She wasn't Katya Dmytruk, or even Katya. She wasn't the girl who hung around the books or the chess boards simply because that's where she could follow the oh-so-familiar face. Today, she wasn't even the girl who knew where she was going. She was little more than a wandering number, with three letters squashed together for a name.

She went aimlessly about her day, letting the loudspeaker guide her when she had to and her conscience do so when there was nothing else to do the job. Of course, her sense of direction was about as lost as her memory, and it wasn't long before all the halls---and the people that filled them---began to look the same. So when she came to a door, she didn't hesitate to open it.

She was... outside? She didn't know how long she'd been at the labs, but she was sure it was a long time, and she couldn't remember every standing in front of a field like this one. (Not that that was the case, of course. After six years, Kat had been outside more than a few times, sometimes running the expanse just for the wind in her hair; though that was in her earlier days, when she had the energy to do so. Other, more recent times, she'd just look on like she was now, just taking in the sight.) The grass blew with the breeze, and nature, which had felt so distant within the labs, was suddenly only an arm's lenth away.

But loving nature took too much energy. Kat looked down to see a stranger---though they were all strangers, weren't they?---sitting on the step before her. He looked cold, trying to blow heat into his hands, though Kat couldn't imagine why; even with just her thin, long-sleeved shirt covering her arms, the air was only a little bit chilly, at worst. It wasn't even enough to envoke a shiver. It certainly wasn't cold enough for her to turn and reenter the repetitive halls, so she slowly sat on the step opposite him.

Not that Kat was an expert on such a thing, but as she glanced, the stranger looked a bit lost. She couldn't blame him, for sure; she was probably just as lost as he was, if not more. When he spoke, his English was more than just slightly broken, but she almost felt she understood. "With fire?" she asked at first, a little confused before his gesture registered in her empty mind. "Cigarettes? Or a something to light them with?" She shook her head and shrugged just a little, holding her empty hands up. "Nyet, I apologize. I have neither. I don't smoke."